The purpose of this page is to help you find particular counties and
townships on the microfilm rolls of the 1790 Census and, for those counties
that were not yet in their final form in 1790, to know what later counties
these census records would belong in today. You can use the links
below to jump directly to a county, or you might want to read the "explanation"
first, to make the table below more intelligible.

Links in ALL-CAPS are to the counties as enumerated in 1790. Links
in Initial-Caps are to counties formed after 1790, where some of the included
townships came ultimately to rest. Some counties appear in several
places in the table, which is why there are multiple links for some counties.

[üThe
check marks are for my own research purposes. Please ignore
them.]

The 1790 Census of Pennsylvania is contained in eight volumes, which
were filmed by the National Archives on two rolls of microfilm (M-637-8
and -9). Each of the Heritage Quest Census Microfilm CDs contains
the digitized images from one roll of microfilm. The indexes on the
CDs are divided into numbered "PARTS," each of which contains one volume.

Most of the census pages appear not to have been originally numbered.
The numbers appear to have been added at one time because they occur
in the same hand, with the same writing implement, and across all volumes
on both microfilm rolls — which makes me suspect this numbering was done
at the time the pages were microfilmed. These are the page numbers
used in the index on the CD.

Berk County is the major exception, where its pages (1-169) appear to
have been numbered originally. Given that Berks Co. is the
first county on Volume 1, the original numbers correspond to the numbers
in the index making it the only county where there is this correspondence
between original and added page numbers.

I had hoped by carefully noting original versus added page numbers that
I could sort out the discrepancies between the page numbers given on the
Heritage Quest CDs and the page numbers as given on the Broderbund Census
Index CD for 1790 (CD-311). This has not been the case, and so I
find the Broderbund CD virtually useless for finding a particular individual
on a particular census page.

The index below is my direct reading of the digitized microfilm on this
CD. It is verbatim, even when I knew the scribe had misspelled a
placename, in which case I supplied the current name in brackets [].
Also, to save room in the table, I abbreviated "Township," as "Twp.," even
though in the record it was always spelled out. The indexes below
are not just blind copies of the indices produced by the census clerks,
ca. 1900-1901, as are sometimes given on the CD, though the two agree about
98% of the time.

"HN" = an historical note added by me (information that was not in the
census).

The townships were not enumerated separately, but the list is not alphabetical,
so some "neighborhood reconstruction" may be possible.
The original pages were numbered from 1-12. Another
set of numbers has been added, in a different hand, ranging from 111 to
133, except that only odd numbers were used, no even numbers. This
latter set of numbers corresponds to the numbers in the index on the CD.

1-12;
111-133

Huntingdon
Blair
Mifflin
Clearfield
Cambria
Centre

Mifflin
County (part) —
"south of the River Juniata,"which is nowmostly inJuniata Co.

The townships were not enumerated separately, but the list is not alphabetical,
so some "neighborhood reconstruction" may be possible.
The original pages were numbered from 1-3. Another
set of numbers has been added, in a different hand, ranging from 135 to
139, except that only odd numbers were used, no even numbers. This
latter set of numbers corresponds to the numbers in the index on the CD.Some names in this section are unreadable due to the
darkness of the images towards the bottom edges.

The Westmoreland Co. pages are supposed to be here, but they're not.
There is a gap in the numbering from 72 to 109. Did Heritage Quest
overlook these pages? Or were they so bad they weren't worth digitizing?

70-109

Westmoreland
Indiana
Armstrong

Bucks
County
[the boundaries ofBucks Co. have beenstable since 1752]

Not enumerated by townships, but neither is the list alphabetized,
so "neighborhood reconstruction" may be possible.

1965. Population Schedules of the First Census of the United
State, 1790: Roll 9, Pennsylvania, Volumes 6-8. Microcopy
No. 673. National Archives Microfilm Publications, Washington, DC.

--

Heritage Quest CD-M637-9: Pennsylvania Census,
1790, Roll 9

PART 1 = Volume 6

Curren
Location

Montgomery
County
[the boundaries ofMontgomery Co.have not changedsince it was formedin 1784]

Not enumerated by townships, but neither is the list alphabetized,
so "neighborhood reconstruction" may be possible.
There are two sets of numbers on these pages:1) a smaller set, beginning with number one on the first
page of enumerations and2) a larger set beginning with number one on the title
page.The latter are in the hand that wrote the numers on all
eight volumes and correspond to the numbers in the index on the CD.
Throughout, the former set is two digits less than the latter.

There are two sets of numbers on these pages:1) a smaller set, beginning with number one on the first
page of enumerations (but chipped off on most pages), and2) a larger set that is a continuation of the page numbering
from Montgomery County.The latter are in the hand that wrote the numers on all
eight volumes and correspond to the numbers in the index on the CD.
Throughout, the former set is 53 digits less than the latter, so I will
not clutter the table with both sets. The set given is the latter,
that is, the numbers in the index on the CD.

There are two sets of numbers on these pages, which are
a continuation of the numbering on the Westmoreland County pages.

-

-

Plum Twp.

123-124

Venango?

Pitt Twp.

125-126

?

Pittsburgh

127-128

Allegheny

"Pitt"

129-133

?

French Creek
[A maginal note in another hand states that it was a
mistake to put these records in Allegheney Co., that they should have been
in Westmoreland Co. and that French Creek ended up in Crawford Co.
However, French Creek Twp. ended up in Mercer Co., which was formed from
Allegheny and Crawford Cos. in 1800; and Allegheny had been formed from
Westmoreland in 1786, so the records do belong here where they are.
Therefore, the the note is wrong on both counts — which only goes to reinforce
the importance of the maxim of NEVER marking up original records with notes!]

Not enumerated by townships, but neither is the list alphabetized,
so "neighborhood reconstruction" may be possible.
There are two sets of numbers on these pages:1) a smaller set, beginning with number one on the first
page of enumerations (but chipped off or too dark to read on most pages)
and2) a larger set that is continuous with the one starting
this roll of microfilm. Throughout, the former set is 144 digits less than the
latter.

Not enumerated by townships, but neither is the list alphabetized,
so "neighborhood reconstruction" may be possible.
There are two sets of numbers on these pages:1) a smaller set that is continuous with the numbering
for Washington County (but chipped off or too dark to read on most
pages) and2) a larger set that is continuous with the one starting
this roll of microfilm. Throughout, the former set is 205 digits less than the
latter.

Not enumerated by townships, but neither is the list alphabetized,
so "neighborhood reconstruction" may be possible.
There are two sets of numbers on these pages:1) a smaller set, beginning with number one on the first
page of enumerations (but chipped off or too dark to read on most pages)
and2) a larger set that is continuous with the one starting
this roll of microfilm.Throughout, the former set is 228 digits less than the
latter.

1-34;
229-262

Beford
Fulton
Somerset
Cambria
Blair

Franklin
County
[the boundaries ofFranklin Co. havenot changed sinceit was formed in 1784]

Not enumerated by townships, but neither is the list alphabetized,
so "neighborhood reconstruction" may be possible.
There are two sets of numbers on these pages:1) a smaller set, beginning with number one on the first
page of enumerations (but chipped off or too dark to read on most pages)
and2) a larger set that is continuous with the one starting
this roll of microfilm.Throughout, the former set is 265 digits less than the
latter, so I will not clutter the table with both sets. The set given
is the latter, that is, the numbers in the index on the CD.

1-24;
266-289

Franklin

Fannett, Peters, Montgomery, Hamilton, and Letterkenney Twps.
The smaller numbering sequence was re-started, beginning
with number one on the first page of enumerations, so they are now 292
less than the larger numbers.